by Andy Monk
The Host. And each step they took in the dust of their guard’s hooves was taking them closer.
*
They stopped for water a few times during the day and for an hour at noon for more biscuits. From the kindness of their poisoned hearts the guards took their nooses off while they rested, allowing him the freedom to pick and worry at his chafed neck.
They sat in a rough circle, hands still bound. Magaine placed enamel mugs and a couple of biscuits in front of each of them. He tried not to gulp down the water in one go. There wouldn’t be any more for hours and between the heat and the dust thrown up by the horses his throat hurt as much as his neck. The biscuits were also pretty much inedible without water to flush them down.
The guards weren’t paying a whole lot of attention as they ate and swigged from the numerous water skins slung from their saddles, but they didn’t need to. He could probably get up and run before they’d notice, but how far could he go?
He could try and hide in the long grass, but he’d be easy to spot from horseback.
And hiding in the grass never solved anything. They always find you.
The image of a tall black man looking down at him flashed across his mind, but it was gone before he could catch hold of it. He knew he’d never had to hide from a black man, or any other kind of man, in the grass before. His Ma a few times when he was little…
The pain cutting through his guts was worse than anything else his abused body was suffering and he squeezed his eyes closed till the pain subsided. It didn’t go away. If he got out of this, eventually, his neck and his feet and his wrists and his ankles would all heal and one day he wouldn’t even remember how bad they hurt right now. But the pain he felt when he thought of his Ma lying dead on the ground… that wasn’t ever going to heal up.
She’d been his life; constant, dependable, resilient. Occasionally a pain in the ass, but he’d always felt the warmth of her love. She’d always been there for him, no matter what. And when she’d needed him the most, he hadn’t been there, so she’d died alone in the dirt surrounded by laughing strangers.
He forced his eyes open and found everything was still as shit as when he’d closed them.
Nicole was motionless, her head lolling forward, water and biscuits untouched in front of her.
“You should drink that…”
She raised her head slowly. Her long dark hair was a mass of knots and tangles littered with flecks of grass. Her skin, which he suspected had been pale a few days ago, was now an angry red. He didn’t know her at all, which was strange as he thought he knew all the local women around his age thanks to Ma’s unfulfilled quest to find him a suitable wife.
“Why?” she croaked.
“Need to keep strong… if we’re to get out of this.”
Her smile was a cold bright sickle cutting her flushed face.
“We’re not getting out of this.”
He glanced at the guards, but they weren’t close enough to hear anything.
“Tonight, we’re getting away from them, one way or another.”
“Tonight…” she repeated, her voice the cracked rasp of an old crone “… the one with the grey beard told me what’s gone to happen tonight.”
“Shelton… what did he say?”
“Told me they’ll be breaking me in some more…”
“Breaking you in?”
“That’s what they call it…” Sally clasped an empty mug between her tightly bound hands, “…what they did to us. Guess rape’s too hard a word for them…”
“Drink the water. No one’s getting raped.”
Sally looked at him like he was a fool for making promises he had no way of keeping.
“Tonight. We run. Or we kill them. Or we die trying.”
With trembling hesitant hands Nicole clasped the mug and lifted it towards her lips. Then she tipped it out onto the grass.
“You’re full of shit,” she spat, before sinking back to stare at the brutal blue sky.
*
When you were going to attack four armed men with only three abused young women and a girl who cried all the time to help you, coming up with a plan seemed like a damn good idea.
It was a shame he couldn’t think of one.
Instead, he would have to take his chance when it came and hoped the others would do something more than scream or cry or throw water on the grass.
He’d been working on his bindings all day and had loosened them a little, but there was no way he was going to slip them by the evening. The rope was thick and coarse, wrapped around both wrists and knotted expertly. However, he reckoned he could move his hands enough to hold and fire a pistol. He just had to get hold of one.
It wasn’t much of a chance he knew, but he had no intention of reaching the Host. He wasn’t going to be thrown into a cage and have to kill another man just so he could become like Cave and Shelton and the others. He didn’t think he ever could be as evil as them, but maybe Cave and Shelton might have thought the same once.
He wasn’t like them. He’d never hurt a woman, he’d never kill, he’d never steal, he’d never burn and loot. He wasn’t like them, but he was frightened that maybe, deep down, part of him might be and the rest of him wouldn’t be strong enough to stop it consuming him. When Nicole and Cailyn looked at him with suspicious, fearful eyes, what did they see? How different did he look to them?
What… have you done to me?
He’d done nothing. Nothing. He was sure he’d done nothing.
And yet…
He couldn't shake the persistent, nagging feeling he’d done something. Something stupid and hurtful and terrible. Something to a woman. He kept telling himself if he had done something that bad he’d damn well remember it, after all, you couldn’t forget really terrible things, could you? Forgetting to buy a new pitchfork, sure, not getting the sheet off the line like you said you would, that there was milk boiling on the stove. The little, mundane stuff, for sure. But terrible stuff? Really terrible stuff? No, like not being there when your Ma was murdered, that was something he’d never forget.
By the time they made camp his head was as sore from bouncing between trying to remember something he couldn’t possibly have forgotten and how to tackle four armed men, as it was from the sun that had beat down on it all day.
The routine was established now; the guards unhitched the ropes from their saddles and led the prisoners away from the horses. Cave stayed in the saddle with a rifle across his lap while the nooses were taken off and they slumped exhausted onto the grass.
He’d considered going for Shelton’s gun while he took the noose off, but Cave was paying too much attention. He had only a small window while they were fed and watered and before they were hog-tied again.
They slumped into the grass, panting and slick with sweat. His throat was raw and as much as he wanted to get this done he was hoping there’d give them water before presenting him with a chance.
All their eyes were on the guards, or more accurately their water skins. As usual they saw to the horses first, when they were secure and tended the men stood around and sloshed water down their necks to their throat’s content while they talked shit. When they’d had their fill, they came and poured a little for them.
As he watched, Shelton pulled a couple of blankets out and laid them on the ground half a dozen yards away, stamping down the grass underneath the blankets while the other three guards watched and talked in low voices.
They hadn’t done this before.
When he was satisfied Shelton straightened up and looked at them, tipping his hat back a fraction. He winked a slow knowing wink, before sauntering back to the others.
There was a low moan and he looked around to see Nicole clutching her knees and shaking.
He exchanged a look with Sally who rolled her dry bottom lip between her teeth but said nothing. Cailyn shuffled over to Nicole and put her head against the girl’s. Nicole looked sixteen or seventeen and she was terrified.
Every other
break they’d been given water in mugs, but this time Gabb came over and tossed a canteen at him, “Make sure she gets a good drink,” he nodded in Nicole’s direction, “she’s gonna need it.” Shelton and Magaine brayed like rabid dogs. Gabb threw a handful of biscuits after the water.
The canteen was less than half full. He passed it to Laura first.
“We all need to drink.”
He watched the guards as the women drank and forced down the biscuits. Usually they’d be eating and setting down their bedrolls. But not tonight. Tonight they were going to do something different.
Tonight, he was going to kill them. Somehow.
Sally pushed the canteen into his hands.
“Nicole?”
“She had a mouthful.”
The girl looked on the point of hysteria, she was crying, though where she got the moisture from God alone knew, and pounding her bound hands against her raised knees.
“Not again… not again… not again…” she was whispering over and over between her sobs.
“I’m not going to let them hurt her,” he hissed.
“Hope you’ve got a plan.”
“Have to try something when they come to tie us, after that we’re here for the night.”
“Be dark in an hour, they’ll tie us then.”
“Maybe if you trip one and I’ll try and get his gun while he's down?”
“Ain’t much of a plan.”
“I’m not going to the Host. You?”
She shook her head.
Cailyn was looking at them over the top of Nicole’s head as she tried to comfort the girl. She swallowed and shook her head too.
“When they come over…”
Cailyn’s eyes widened a fraction and she buried her face in Nicole’s tangled hair.
Magaine and Gabb were ambling over, carrying ropes, Shelton was behind them, a set of leg-irons dangling from his hands and a grin splitting his beard from ear to ear.
Cave was waiting by the blankets they’d laid out on the grass.
“Early night for you people,” Shelton said, then looked at Nicole, “apart from you sweetheart, you got some work to do...”
Gabb clapped his hands, “On your bellies.”
“Please…” he croaked, as Nicole’s sobbing turned into a wail, “…we’ve been walking all day in the heat, let us have a little longer.”
“World’s a hard place, son…” Gabb shrugged, he was a tall spare man with a thick moustache and the front brim of his sombrero bent upwards, “you’ll thank us for making you stronger one day.”
“I’m never going to be like you.”
“Then they’ll be one less weakling to pollute the Earth,” Magaine growled, grabbing Nicole by the arm and pulling her from Cailyn’s embrace to her feet.
“What are you doing with her?” he struggled to his feet.
“A Bride’s gotta do her work,” Shelton grinned as Magaine pushed the sobbing girl towards him.
“Down. On. Your. Belly,” Gabb ordered, right hand falling close to his holstered gun.
“This is wrong, leave her alone!” he took a step forward, though his legs were so stiff it was little more than a hobble.
“Only way to make enough babies for the New Nation,” Magaine explained, straightening up, “Now get down on your ass. The Old Man will explain the doctrine to you once we reach the Host.”
“I’m not like you. I’ll never be like you! I don’t hurt women!”
He took another step forward, dimly aware they had planned to lure one of the guards in for Sally and Cailyn to trip so he could grab a gun. It didn’t seem to be working out like that.
Fury and pain burned too brightly behind his eyes. All he could see was his Ma, dead and alone in the dirt and the only thing he could hear was those same words over and over again.
What… have you done to me?
“Kid’s come over all chivalrous,” Shelton sniggered, holding Nicole with both hands. He was dragging her backwards towards Cave and the blankets, “teach him a lesson.”
“Let her go!!” he screamed, barrelling into Gabb before he even knew what was happening, his molten anger carrying him forwards.
His charge caught Gabb off balance and the pair of them hit the ground together. He landed on top of him, close enough to taste the man’s tobacco stink and, for a second, wide, bloodshot eyes filled his vision. He tried to head-butt him, but Gabb twisted out of the way and pushed him off.
He tried to swing his bound hands at the man’s face, but something hit him hard on the back of his head and he went down face first into the grass, hard enough to taste rich black earth. He was rolled over onto his back and the sky was filled with feral, snarling faces followed by fists raining down on him.
By the time they started kicking him he’d passed out.
The Mother
She’d been thinking about the best way to kill herself.
It was an awful thing, of course, but every other option seemed to be too hopeless or too terrible. She couldn’t face Blane again, knowing each time he would do a little more. That was his game, destroying her in tiny increments till there was nothing left inside.
The only way to deny him was to kill herself. There was no escape bar the grave and she’d much rather send herself there than endure the slow, torturous journey Blane would send her on. A journey that would end up in the same place anyway.
She was sitting in Emily’s room, holding her daughter’s hand. She’d barely ventured out of the room since Blane had left her naked and sobbing on Preacher Stone’s floor.
Emily had retreated so far within herself she barely left her bedroom now. She’d taken to spending most of her time in the room too, even curling up next to her daughter at night, not that either of them did much in the way of sleeping.
Emily had spent the previous night staring sightlessly at the darkened ceiling while she’d lain next to her, arms wrapped around her unresponsive daughter trying to imagine slicing open her own wrists or blowing her brains out with Ash’s old shotgun.
Those dark thoughts, which had once been no more than echoes of distant thunder, were now a full-blown storm, lashing her with despair and hopelessness.
She’d even started to consider killing her daughters too. Emily was dying slowly anyway, she was barely eating, hardly sleeping. It would be a mercy. And Ruthie? What kind of life would she have alone in this terrible world? There was still her father, of course, but Ash was being eaten by his own demons and spent as little time in the house as he could.
What would be crueller? A sprinkle of poison on her supper or a life haunted by what had happened to her family, alone in a world where monsters like Blane stalked the shadows.
She thought about killing Blane too. That would be harder, but it would stop him hurting anyone else the way he was hurting her.
She leant over and wiped the hair from Emily’s face.
Hawker’s Drift wasn’t a big town, a few thousand souls, plus those living in the ring of farms and homesteads spread-out on the grass. Blane was a monster capable of anything. She’d seen the evil in him and the joy he took in hurting her. A monster had snuck into her home and destroyed Emily too.
Was Hawker’s Drift big enough to harbour two monsters?
Probably, the world was a much darker place than she’d thought, but he was certainly capable.
She sighed and stretched. Her back was stiff from sitting hunched forward for so long.
“What should I do Em?” she whispered, “Help me. Tell me what should I do?”
No answer was forthcoming; the sound of the front door opening distracted her from asking any more questions.
Back when the world was sane Ash would never have come home early unless he was ill or something was seriously wrong. It was the kind of dependable, solid, regularity that had given her the opportunity to be unfaithful to him in the first place, but now all order had disintegrated and she wasn’t surprised whatever time of the day or night he rolled home. If he came home at
all.
She turned her attention back to Emily, smiling an empty smile and squeezing her hand again.
“I love you, sweetheart…”
Emily pulled her hand free and rolled over onto her side. It was about as expressive as she got these days. She bit her lip and wiped the back of her hand over her eyes. She wanted to sob, but she managed to swallow it this time.
Footsteps were coming up the stairs, the boards creaking with their familiar rhythm.
She looked up and twisted around to face the closed bedroom door. She’d assumed it was Ash, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. But did those footsteps sound like his? Didn’t Ash usually gallop up the stairs, night or day, making the house shudder with his big heavy feet, often much to her annoyance? Weren’t these a bit slow and, somehow, mechanical?
Blane, however, had a slow stiff-legged gait, walking like he had to consider every single movement he made. Her stomach rolled.
Had he come into her home now? Was that the next stage in the game? Appearing unexpectedly in the middle of the day to humiliate and degrade her. Maybe this time he wouldn’t just leave her crying on the floor. Maybe he’d want more this time. Maybe he’d…
The footsteps stopped on the landing and the house fell back into silence.
She found her fingers were pressing against her lips and she fought down the urge to crawl under the bed and hide. Instead, she strained to listen. Nothing. But there had been footsteps on the stairs. Whoever had come up the stairs was standing on the landing, perhaps turning cold muddy eyes on each door in turn, working out which one good ol’ Katie was behind, which one stood between him and his fun.
There were no weapons in the room. Why would there be? No knives, no scissors, not even a knitting needle or a darning kit. She’d taken everything sharp from the room soon after Emily had regained consciousness and it had become obvious it was more than just her body that had been broken by the ordeal she’d suffered.